Liberal Fraudsters

I sometimes reflect on the hysteria of the Bush years, though not so often as before.  I remember liberals personally expressing to me their anger and dismay over the fierce moral urgency, in their minds, of such needs as addressing global warming, closing the Gitmo detention center, withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and revoking the Patriot Act.  Now, after almost three years into Obama's tenure, the anthropogenic global warming movement has been shown to be a fraud, Gitmo is still open, the Patriot Act remains, and not only are Americans still fighting overseas but Obama actually ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan.

What happened to the outrage?  Where is the anger and angst?  Gone, gone to graveyards every one.  We see now, and I knew then, it wasn't about the specifics, the facts -- it was cynical politics about smearing anything Bush was doing or not doing, no matter how damaging to the social and political fabric of America and its image abroad.  That has changed me, raising up an anger at those who would hurt America to hurt their politcial opponents.

Where are those liberals now, those contemptible liberals, who were shouting lies about American troops at Gitmo?  Where are those liberals now, those contemptible liberals, outraged just a few years ago over our foreign wars and the supposedly fascist Patriot Act?  Where were they when Obama committed American troops to the recent war in Libya?  Where are those liberals now, those contemptible liberals, screaming about the man-made global warming that even they by now, if they can dredge up even the slightest wisp of intellectual honesty, must know is only their unsubstantiated hope?

Victor Davis Hanson today (link) at National Review Online:

Given Climategate II, no noticeable heating of the planet during the last decade, and all sorts of questionable research … the man-made-global-warming movement is about done for now. We sometimes forget that the fad gained its traction during the Bush years …. hysteria attributable to Bush derangement syndrome. I say hysteria because, like global warming, there no longer seems to be much furor over, for example, guidelines on stem-cell research. Iraq has become one of the administration’s “greatest achievements.” Afghanistan is no longer the “good” war that we “took our eye off.” Renditions, Guantanamo, tribunals, preventive detention, Predators, and the Patriot Act are no longer destroying the Constitution. Bombing a Muslim oil-producing country is no longer a war crime.

It is as if all these -isms and -ologies of the early 21st century — and their representatives, from Al Gore to Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and Sean Penn — were entirely ...valid simply because they were the opposite of what Bush was (or supposedly was) for or against. With Bush removed from the calculus, the progressive community is silent and sometimes even embarrassed about the issues that once inspired them…. and so the hysteria quietly subsided and is now being Trotskyized away.

John M Greco

Related Posts:

Why the Left Loves Global Warming, or, What’s It All About, Alfie?

Climategate Shows Global Warming Alarmism Is a Faith-Based Initiative

Horror in Happy Valley -- And Trustees Opt for Damage Control

After I first posted the other day on the developing Penn State sex abuse scandal, I didn’t anticipate commenting a second time, and when I did I really thought that would be the last.  But Penn State’s continued obliviousness draws me once again to the keyboard. 

Recognizing that we have only allegations at this point, but acknowledging also that we have certain facts like a 1998 investigation of the alleged perpetrator Sandusky by multiple authorities, I have written that “my guess is that when all the facts emerge this will come out as a 15 or so year conspiracy of silence involving Paterno and many others to cover up ongoing homosexual rape and other sexual molestation of young boys at Penn State, practically in plain sight.”

For so many, I suspect the horror of the depth and breadth of the allegations and facts known so far are incomprehensible, and perhaps some resistance to objectivity on the part of some longtime Paterno and Penn State athletic boosters is understandable.  But the University Board of trustees should be above that and past that.  

In the wake of continued University employment of the assistant coach who testified to the grand jury that when finding a boy being raped in a Penn State athletic department shower room he neither rescued the boy nor called the police, in the wake of the trustees’ new interim football coach Tom Bradley just praising Paterno as a man who “will go down in history as one of the greatest men....", in the wake of some oblivious students rioting in support of Paterno, the Board of Trustees met and appointed someone to lead the University’s internal investigation of this whole sordid affair.

Did the Penn State Board select someone independent of the school and its culture, with a background in investigation and law enforcement?  Well, by now we know the answer to expect given what we’re rapidly learning about the Penn State culture.  No it did not.  The Board chose a Penn State grad, an attorney, who’s an executive with a pharmaceutical firm.  No reported investigative experience.      

Is the Board first and foremost interested in the full truth, or some truth with a heavy dose of damage control?  But it doesn’t really matter now, anyway -- the truth will come out in due course, perhaps mostly in tortuous and torturous drips and drabs.    

We already have inconsistencies in the grand jury testimony of Penn State officials Paterno, Curley, and Schultz.  Eventually we will find out who knew what and when they knew it.  We will get answers to many questions, including these:

• Why were the 1998 investigations of two child sex abuse allegations against Sandusky dropped by the county prosecutor, the local child welfare agency, and the Penn State police department? 
• Why did Sandusky unexpectedly retire in 1999 as one of Paterno’s chief lieutenants?  Any why was a special retirement deal negotiated with him?   
• How many people in and around the Penn State athletic department had reasonable suspicions and concerns about Sandusky and his entourage of boys?  
• Why didn’t officials at the local school, at which Sandusky served as a volunteer football coach as recently as a few years ago, alert authorities when he was found in sexually suggestive situations with boys at the school?  
• Why did prosecutors wait until November 2011 to arrest Sandusky, the subject of an investigation for years, thus revealing then the explosive charges?  Was it just coincidence that the revelation came just days after Paterno set the record for most football wins as a college coach?  Who was responsible for the decision on the timing? 

In the end, I suspect that the ultimate motivation for what looks like a 15+ year cover up by many adults in many different agencies and departments will be the fear of what exposure would do to their money and glory.  I heard on Fox News yesterday that the CEO of Sandusky’s “charity” for young troubled boys has been paid $1.3 million since 1998, and I’ve heard it said that Penn State’s football program was one of the most lucrative in college sports. 

The truth will all come out eventually, but Penn State’s reactionary Board may not be the source of much of it.    

John M Greco

Prior Posts:

Paterno & Penn State Look Like Burnt Toast

Penn State Still Clueless in Happy Valley

  

Penn State Still Clueless in Happy Valley

The Penn State Board of Trustees has just replaced football coach Joe Paterno with a guy named Tom Bradley.  He's been a Paterno assistant for over 30 years, and apparently idolizes the old man.  That's the Penn State way of cleaning house.  Faced with what will likely be the biggest scandal in its history, 15+ years of child sexual abuse and its enabling and cover up by university staff and officials, the University remains blinded by the Paterno glow that is no longer seen by anyone else. 

If one reads the grand jury report (link) and then constructs a simple timeline, one quickly sees that the first clear point on the public record is the 1998 investigation of defendant Sandusky by both Penn State police and the county prosecutor for allegations of child sexual abuse.  For reasons as yet unrevealed, the local county prosecutor, in a rural area dominated by the University, declined to files charges against Sandusky, the well-known, prominent football assistant coach and Paterno protege.  Hmmm. 

Shortly after that, Sandusky unexpectedly retired at the very young age of 55.  Hmmm.  He was allowed by Penn State to keep all privilges of a retired coach, including access to athletic facilities.  At that point he also had been for years the head of his own charity for troubled young boys.  Hmmm.  Of course this looks all the world like people at Penn State made a deal with Sandusky -- retire quietly and don't embarrass the school and football program and we'll keep quiet about you and let you keep your perks.  This certainly looks like a cover up began no later than 1998.

Four years went by during which Sandusky continued as head of his charity for young troubled boys and was seen with them around the school.  Then, in 2002, a young assistant coach named McQueary comes upon Sandusky raping a young boy in the Penn State athletic facilities late one evening.  He didn't stop it, he didn't save the boy, he didn't call police.  Instead, he told Paterno the next day, who in turn yet another day later told the athletic director Curley and senior adminsitrator Schultz, who in turn later told university president Spanier.  None of these four called the police.  They all now, of course, deny being told the specific nature of the act, and now assert they thought that the naked Sandusky was engaging in some kind of innocent horseplay with a naked young boy in a Penn State shower.  Just before he was fired the other day, university president Spanier expressed support (link) for Curley and Schultz, who are now under indictment for perjury about this whole matter.  However, not one of them has yet to explain publicly his 2002 inaction in light of the 1998 Penn State university police investigation and report on Sandusky.

It is absolutely unbelievable to think that Paterno did not know, in 2002, of the 1998 child abuse allegations against Sandusky and the report of the investigation by university police.  After all, who if not Paterno would know why his chief assistant coach suddently retired in 1998.  In fact, it seems probable that, given his status at Penn State, Paterno played a central role in a likely cover up deal in 1998. 

Because Sandusky's alleged rape in 2002 of a young boy in a Penn State shower was not reported to police, and because of earlier inaction in 1998, he remained at large with full access to Penn Sate facilities, during which time he allegedly continued to molest young boys for years after that.

Now, with the scandal finally breaking out into the open, Penn State has just fired Paterno and university president Spanier.  Many more departures will follow.

Yet despite all that we now know, thousands of ignorant and misguided Penn State students have just protested Paterno's firing.  And yesterday, new interim football coach Bradley, reportedly a Paterno assistant for 33 years and the man who got Sandusky's specific senior coaching job in 1999, said this (link) about Paterno:  "Coach Paterno will go down in history as one of the greatest men...." 

From the University president, to the coaches, to senior administrators, is there any adult at Penn State not involved in the cover up?  The Board replaces Paterno with one of his acolytes who now praises him as a great man.  If the Penn State Trustees can't find responsible, sensible, and uninvolved adults to take over and clean house, then they should all resign themselves and let the state take over. 

As I said in my first post about this horrific scandal (link), "my guess is that when all the facts emerge this will come out as a 15 or so year conspiracy of silence involving Paterno and many others to cover up ongoing homosexual rape and other sexual molestation of young boys at Penn State, practically in plain sight. This whole scandal looks ugly now, and will likely look many times worse before this is all over."

John M Greco

Other Posts:
Paterno & Penn State Look Like Burnt Toast

Horror in Happy Valley -- And Trustees Opt for DamageControl

The Democrat Universal Solution To All Ills

New Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, formerly of the Clinton and Obama Administrations, faced with the usual big Democrat city challenges -- rising costs, decreasing revenues, and massive deficits -- stares down a massively bloated city budget, brimming with wasteful patronage jobs and drowning from an inestimable "corruption" tax, a populace still reeling from a recent straight-line Democrat-enacted state income tax hike of 67% on people and almost 50% on businesses (link), businesses feeling and threatening to flee the city and state (link), corruption everywhere with pensions and Democrat unions (link), now figures out what to do:  raise taxes (link).  Now that's real thinking outside the Democrat box.

Well, he could have staged a demonstration, like he's done before (link), except that Democrat-endorsed Occupy protesters are hogging all the media space.

John M Greco

Paterno & Penn State Look Like Burnt Toast

Much is being written about the incredible, horrific allegations of sexual abuse of minor boys over a more than 15 year period by a prominent assistant football coach at Penn State (link; link).  After reading many reports and comments to the story, the greatest focus with regard to Penn State's culpability is on the events of 2002, at which time an assistant coach alleges to have observed the defendant raping a young boy in a Penn State athletic facility shower and to have reported the observation to his boss, legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who then in turn apparently reported it only internally to his boss, the athletic director, and a senior University administrator.  Police were never called, in violation of the law, reportedly, and certainly of any sense of morality.

However, not much talked about is the fact that in 1998 the defendant was found at Penn State to have engaged in inappropriate behavior with at least one boy and investigations by University police and a prosecutor occurred.  Although no criminal charges were filed, not long after that the defendant retired from Penn State.  He was allowed to keep the perks of a retiree, including an office and access to University facilities, including showers in the athletic department, the site of some later abuse allegations. Notable is the fact that by this time the defendant, besides being a Penn State football coach, was well known to be the director of a youth organization he founded that brought him into daily contact with young, troubled boys, and that such boys were regularly seen in his company.

Joe Paterno, and others at the University, express shock over this whole affair and plead ignorance.  Paterno specifically asserts that when informed of the 2002 allegation he did the right thing by reporting it to senior Penn State officials, and somehow feels his responsibility was limited because his longtime former assistant coach was by then not a University employee. 

However, what's not at all clear is why the defendant suddenly retired in 1998 after the police investigation into abuse allegations at that time, years before the alleged 2002 incident.  If even only some of these allegations are true, then it would appear to me that Paterno and others at Penn State in 1998 realized, if not before then, that the defendant was a child molester, and to avoid embarrassment to the University and the football program they let him retire.  Perhaps in exchange for his silence and perhaps even for a sham promise to stop such behavior they allowed the defendant to keep his access to the facilities. 

If the allegations are verified, it is impossible to believe that the defendant could have had young boys frequently in his company for over 15 years at the Penn State athletic facilities, particularly after the known sex abuse investigation of 1998, without the entire coaching staff and other university officials seeing him and suspecting what he was up to. 

If the allegations are verified, Joe Paterno's name, and that of what may come to scores of other Penn State coaches and university officials, will be mud forever.  My guess is that when all the facts emerge this will come out as a 15 or so year conspiracy of silence involving Paterno and many others to cover up ongoing homosexual rape and other sexual molestation of young boys at Penn State, practically in plain sight.  This whole scandal looks ugly now, and will likely look many times worse before this is all over.

John M Greco

Subsequent Post:
Penn State Still Clueless in Happy Valley
Horror in Happy Valley -- And Trustees Opt for DamageControl